Have you ever wondered what a travel day looks like on the World Race? Well…. wonder no more!
A typical travel day involves herding all 54 of us, plus our bags into planes, trains and automobiles.
This latest travel day would involve multiple shuttles, two planes, cabs, and three buses.
The goal: Get from Kathmandu, Nepal to Da Nang, Vietnam. Roughly 2,568 miles.
We left for the airport in Kathmandu around 10 am for our 3 pm flight. A lot of what we do is hurrying up to wait around. We had the rare luxury of having the bulk of our plane to ourselves. This allows S Squad to be well…. ourselves, rather than on our very best travel behavior (a.k.a we had a dance party on the plane).
We had a ten hour layover in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. With that much time many of us couldn’t resist the urge to go exploring and get another stamp in our passport. So at 11 pm we headed out to hit up the town. Kuala Lumpur is home to the world’s tallest twin towers.
We stopped and got shawarma, which is basically a wrap. The meat is roasted and carved off of a spit. It was amazing at 1 in the morning.
After exploring the city, we finally headed back to the airport at 5 am in order the catch our 8 am flight. We finally arrived in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam around 10 am. After a couple of hours waiting around for visas to clear we finally headed out. Our next goal was to find buses to take us to the bus station. After many hand gestures and over coming a massive language barrier, we got our bus tickets and settled in for a 21 hour bus ride. I know… I look thrilled.
Luckily, I was able to sleep about 16 hours of that ride. The benefits of staying up over 24 hours the day before. We occasionally stopped to eat and go to the bathroom. We were told that our tickets included two meals, and all the other passengers got free meals, but when we tried to ask we were told we had to pay. I was a little salty about that. We made friends with our bunk neighbors. They shared their interesting Vietnamese snacks with us and laughed when I tried to speak to them in English.
We finally made it to Da Nang!! And this was our view. Definitely worth the drive.
All in all, it was a 50 hour travel day between 3 countries. We made it ready to start what the month had for us!
-Caitlin
